The perfectly finished coat of paint
On the car that can do a gazillion things
And even now talk to you
Because people won’t
The ever thinner bezel on the even faster phone
Pushing ever faster G-speeds
That your zoom calls struggle to keep up with
The perfectly laid tiles
And fresh coats of paint on the walls
And neatly arranged flawless furniture
And yes, designer tableware!
No warts
No Blemishes
None of that ugliness
Or uncertainty and chaos
Of a world falling apart
Of dying soils, air, species, hopes,
Or the pressure of a sense of responsibility,
The weight that being a custodian brings
Seeps into the perfectly assembled mirage of your everyday
The illusion of the comfort zone lives on
For one more day
For now
As I go about “everyday”, responding to mails, setting up meetings, trying to get small wins, planning things, reviewing our portfolio with our advisor, hoping to convince more people about better tradeoffs that might help slow this train to the end of the world down, I often feel like the man doing the dance when it all starts to end.
And then I look around, and see the dance at scale, and there’s not even the acknowledgement the man finally had. Our huge, collective pretence continues.
While reality gets to this
I sit in distinguished company, sometimes.
Or amongst good, pleasant, well-intentioned folks.
Or amidst many other myths of culture, humanity, virtues
Deeply believed
Including in me.
And I see,
— Increasingly —
Through the opaque layers of civilisation
Atop which these acknowledged and practised goodnesses exist
Roots that go very deep
Branch out
At war at every depth, every crevice, every opportunity available
With everything we built upon.
Everything we know is an acceptable abstraction
Over now-essential, deep rooted cruelty
And destruction.
The layered goodness, virtues and wins are themselves that war, perhaps.
Inadvertently.
Visit the pretty places
We went to.
Live the moments in the breeze and sun
That we did.
Savour the tastes,
See again the sights,
Live the highs,
Ride the rides,
Laugh again at the jokes,
Sing the songs,
Recount the dreams,
That we shared.
I am in the stories we created together
The joys we lived
The angst we had
The pain we went through.
All of it.
My being or not is mere incident.
My being is in those moments, forever.
